vispro. Visual Prose.

Enzo Patti - Apologies for lack of images - these will be included in the text, but have not been included as they are not yet available for download - better images will be uploaded. These have been taken to get a sense of the discussion. Features: 1)     1) Asemic handwritten text 2)     2) Various printed matter as ground Further correspondence with Enzo reveals that his current overwritten works are also executed on printed leaflets inserted into medicine boxes. Enzo hybridizes the text by inserting very small asemic writing with small characters making the prose more illegible whilst at the same time suggesting landscapes – the sea, sky, an ideal city. Measurements are varied and sometimes the sheets are glued together to create larger works – 30cmx120cm for example. He also makes use of “ book pages if it is a beautiful paper, other times I buy beautiful watercolor paper of 300 grams, large sheets up to 100 cm or even more”. “I like to try all the inks on all t...

A vispro experiment. Is there any difference in intent between a vispro (visual prose) or a vispo (visual poem) image? I created an two different works to see if two different approaches to the same material resulted in two different outcomes – there are many more to follow in order to fully understand the process as well as the finished work, but I need to start somewhere. I have followed David’s words for many years now*, and when I eventually tired of reading his poetry through my own filter, I asked him to write me clues for understanding his poetic. This correspondence has gone on for quite a few years, resulting in books bound and destined for  The New Alexandrian Library**.  I began working firstly with David’s poem  Citadel VI 1. With intent*** to create two different kinds of images, I used David’s poem to begin a vispo work and his prose as the starting point for a  vispro  image. The method approached for the vispo image suggested certain po...

It was a long journey to here, but now I am certain of the animal I am creating. I paint prose in a visual manner. I write layers and layers of prose over canvases up to 3m X 3m. Unfortunately they can’t be bigger because no linen is wider, and wooden frames distort, but ten, twenty, thirty layers of writing or making marks that look like writing, I write, and write and write. Further, I submit my own work as  vispro  having become frustrated with the term ‘vispo’ which seems too encompassing – a generic term to cover a multitude of textual creatures which no longer know why they are even on the textual visual plains – they’re just there, wondering exactly what they are – or not  - I’m often surprised by the indifference with which their inventors create and dispose of them.  Layer 1: The Student. I am a writer, but I am an artist too. Writing has consumed me since childhood. Whether it was the distraught pages of a teenage diary, the ravings of an early 20’s lu...

Chris Wells .                                                                                                                                                       TRA Features: 1)      Printed page, 300dpi. 2)      Digitalized text, Lulu’s old “comic book” format.. 3)      Image from Book. ...

Carrarini, Italo (Italy) Italo wrote this email regarding his work titled  Manifested Hidden Sun (by Benedetto Simonelli) : "From the 80’s onwards much of my research has been sedimentation of texts and images inside surfaces of formats equivalent to sources of origin. From this wide range of possibilities, the  TRANSCRIPTIONS, to which this job belongs. In this case two pages of the same format as the published brochure on which I fully transcribed the author's text. A space that also becomes a personal opportunity to study (hence the marginal notes) which formally define itself as accumulation, as overlap of all the words studied..." Italo Carrarini, Manifested Hidden Sun (by Benedetto Simonelli). 2020 Acrylics and inks on canvas / cardboard   In instances such as this, language barriers can be very frustrating – especially as one cannot understand the nuances or word usage through google translate! But, this undoubtedly  vispro  image speaks to the following ...

Some Definitions:   Form   -  in the instance of attempting to define  vispro,  is the visible outcome of the work intended to be read as  vispro : it’s visible shape, configuration, it’s external manifestation of the inward  vispro  idea.    Medium  for purposes of discussion on  vispro  is intended to encompass the various ‘how’s’ related to the creation of  vispro.   Such mediums include writing, asemic writing, computer generated images, cut-up text, collage, painting, drawing – any tool the  vispro  initiator uses in order to create the  vispro  form. Mediums such as asemic* writing are taken for granted in terms of all it conveys both in current and emerging theory.     Prose  is generally defined as ‘ordinary language’ which follows regular grammatical conventions and does not contain a formal metrical structure. Prose encompasses areas of human conversatio...

Following invite of  Cheryl Penn 's for Vispro group, I am sharing an asemic writing piece from 2019.       It began with a photo of slats on a bench in Paris France.  The color contrasts in the background are a way of grounding the composed asemic writing into an artform, which may tell the reader that I am from a visual art background. I used to dream that I was reading words in a book, and would not be able to read the word, of course, until I could visualize it in my dream. That process is directly connected to 'automatic writing' which, in my case, might be described as 'asemic scribblings'.   The vertical format (used often in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian) could just as well be horizontal, I've used both; but the linear act of writing is represented and so grounds my scribbles into a literary con-text (tongue-in-cheek). When I 'write' with a line on top of a visual piece, it        ...